Hatch, Orrin G.in full Orrin Grant Hatch ( born March 22, 1934 , Homestead Park, Pa., U.S.American politician who served as a U.S. senator from Utah (1977– ), becoming the state’s longest-serving senator. A Republican, he chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee from 1995 to 2001 and again from 2003 to 2005.

Hatch, who was raised a Mormon, earned a bachelor’s degree from Brigham Young University (1959) and a law degree from the University of Pittsburgh (1962). He worked as a lawyer in Pittsburgh from 1963 to 1969, when he relocated his practice to Salt Lake City, Utah. In 1977 he was elected to the Senate, where he was consistently recognized as a crusader for conservative values. In the wake of Roe v. Wade (1973), the U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in the United States, he proposed in 1977 an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would have made abortion illegal. In 1978 he helped to defeat the proposed Labor Law Reform Act, which would have expanded the power of labour unions. Five years later he voted against the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), a proposed amendment to the Constitution that would have invalidated state and federal laws that discriminate on the basis of sex. Hatch co-sponsored the Missing Children Act (1982), which established the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, as well as the Comprehensive Smoking Education Act (1984), which required that cigarette packaging carry warnings from the surgeon general about the dangers of smoking.

Throughout the 1990s and into the 21st century, Hatch continued to serve as a powerful voice for conservatives. He voted in favour of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (1993), which would have prohibited the federal government from placing a substantial “burden [on] a person’s exercise of religion” in all but a few exceptional circumstances. The law was struck down in 1997, however, when the Supreme Court ruled that Congress did not have the power to grant such expansive religious rights. Hatch announced in 1999 that he would run for the Republican nomination for the presidency, but he dropped out of the race after several disappointing primary finishes behind front-runner George W. Bush. After the September 11 attacks in 2001, Hatch helped to draft the controversial USA PATRIOT Act (formally the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001), which gave the federal government broader search-and-surveillance powers for use in preventing acts of terrorism. In 2006, as in previous years, he worked for passage by the Senate of a proposed Constitutional amendment that would make it illegal to burn the American flag, but it failed by one vote. He also worked to set restrictions on class-action lawsuits and to curb medical malpractice suits, sponsoring bills to that effect in 2004 and 2009, respectively.

Despite his ardent conservatism, Hatch occasionally voted in favour of legislation sponsored or supported by Democrats. In 1988, for example, he was the only Republican to support federal funding of AIDS education. Two years later he voted for the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act (1990), which allocated more than $4 billion to address the crisis on a national level. In 2001 he Hatch was also involved in various bipartisan efforts concerning immigration reform, and in 2001 he and Democrat Dick Durbin helped formulate the DREAM (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) Act, dedicated to setting undocumented students on a path to U.S. citizenship. Also in 2001 he became one of the few Republican advocates of stem cell research; he favoured harvesting the cells from umbilical cords rather than from human embryos. He , and he praised Democratic Pres. Barack Obama for lifting the ban on federal funding of stem cell research in 2009. Hatch was often criticized within his party for the close relationship friendship he maintained with Democratic Sen. Edward M. Ted Kennedy.

Hatch is the author of Square Peg: Confessions of a Citizen Senator (2002).